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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/22508842">Roused from a sleep in dark pools of blood and sin</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadyHeliotrope/pseuds/LadyHeliotrope'>LadyHeliotrope</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Abandoned Work - Unfinished and Discontinued, Poetry</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>In-Progress</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-02-01</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-02-01</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-18 08:28:59</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Major Character Death</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>8</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,070</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/22508842</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadyHeliotrope/pseuds/LadyHeliotrope</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>From afar, he could hear the mellow blackbird call, rousing him from a sleep in dark pools of blood and sin. On hiatus.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. Chapter 1</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p></p><div class="storytextp">
  <p></p>
  <div class="storytext xcontrast_txt nocopy">
    <p>
      <strong>Opus IV</strong>
    </p>
    <p>
      <strong>i.</strong>
    </p>
    <p>The way of the wizard child is a strange one;<br/>Power manifests in fulfillment of deep desires<br/>To talk to flower-fairies, to keep one's hair long.<br/>But time and age often quench the strongest of these fires.</p>
    <p>Still there are moments when Christlike self-control,<br/>Born of necessity, swings to the other spectrum-side<br/>In a mature wizard or witch, who regresses to the role<br/>Of a child again, a victim of fight or flight and terrified.</p>
    <p>For a person notoriously indulgent in extremes,<br/>Whose life-existence depended on his facades,<br/>And for whom death was a complexly nuanced dream,<br/>Such a reaction would facilitate avoiding morality, and God.</p>
    <p>Thus it should have come without surprise to him<br/>That, from afar, he could hear the mellow blackbird call,<br/>Rousing him from a sleep in dark pools of blood and sin,<br/>A sleep where hollow, sweet, and clear visions enthralled.</p>
    <p>The prince was first bewildered, then both relieved and enraged,<br/>For it was both a blessing and a curse to remain on earth.<br/>But his soul soon hosted greater fear, with which his sanity waged<br/>A battle as titanic as that of his unhappy parents at his birth.</p>
  </div>
</div>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. Chapter 2</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>ii.</p><p>In his sleep he must have flirted with death, and lost her favor<br/>And won instead the courtship of Adiona, who led him safely home<br/>To the time of his life when he knew joy in almost all of its flavors<br/>And left him in the Shrieking Shack, no longer battered, but alone.</p><p>Rip Van Winkle was not Snape; the mythic man's drowse aged him<br/>As natural and linear as the growth of a magnificent oak tree.<br/>Severus instead had lost the wizened lines of burdens grim<br/>That marked his face as one whose soul never was free.</p><p>Severus was a child again, and unnerved by this course of events<br/>He paced the floors (though his custom was with longer steps)<br/>Thinking why the gods gifted to a man whose life was full of laments<br/>A new chance at acquiring life, liberty, and happiness.</p><p>Was his new age a trick of the mind, an addle of the brain,<br/>One more unfunny joke with which the universe taunted his heart?<br/>Severus was as accustomed to these things as he was to rain.<br/>Even if it was a blessing, all he could do now was take part.</p><p>O for a sun to light his way home! Instead the moon crept upward<br/>And looked white through the window, turning visions of bushes<br/>Sitting plainly in the darkness, like stones in a floodplain unexplored<br/>Into witches with sleepy eyes, scarlet bud lips, and white faces.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0003"><h2>3. Chapter 3</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p></p><div class="storytextp">
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  <div class="storytext xcontrast_txt nocopy">
    <p>
      <strong>iii.</strong>
    </p>
    <p>In the dim solitude, his heart remembered tearlessly<br/>The beauty of a nymph who had vexed his soul's dark wood;<br/>Years when white winters were spent in Lily's company<br/>And the unquiet ghosts of dead and restless men did not haunt the world.</p>
    <p>From the windows of Shrieking Shack, he watched<br/>The Hogwarts students shine with the ruddy enchanted wine<br/>Of youthful vigor and moonlight, and their sprightly walk<br/>Inspired in him a wish to be among them and connect to the divine.</p>
    <p>"Here we should build a tomb," said one, "with grey and crooked bowers<br/>In this garden of thistledown and tares, with moss to green the stones.<br/>There we shall lay Titania, sometime this night, lulled in those flowers,<br/>Which will dance and delight her, a salve to her weary and dry bones."</p>
    <p>Said her friend, "As much as twilight rain and long-leaved grass in the shadows<br/>May be beautiful to a lady whose bed-partners are the daughters of Hades,<br/>Titania does not fancy a place without nightingales, larks, or sparrows.<br/>No thank you, dear Jane, I will rest in a place where the living promenade."</p>
    <p>Keen from his lair, the Slytherin spider leaned against the fragile pane of window,<br/>Pangs of longing in his child-body to join these teenage girls<br/>And receive the tender kisses they bestowed on each others' brows<br/>As he might from three older sisters, even though the loops and curls</p>
    <p>Of their handwritten essays might blossom in lands far from the region of 'Outstanding'.<br/>As his students he knew their prosaic voices well, though their real ones less.<br/>He heard them now, and they were juvenile, unwittingly cruel, concerned with things<br/>That no daughter of Severus Snape would dare to ponder or confess.</p>
  </div>
</div>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0004"><h2>4. Chapter 4</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p></p><div class="storytextp">
  <p></p>
  <div class="storytext xcontrast_txt nocopy">
    <p>iv.</p>
    <p>He felt both pain and relief at being so distanced from their impish laughter,<br/>Watching them kept his judgmental thoughts from turning inward;<br/>There was nothing but a bully's glee in criticizing their conversation matter<br/>But such was the only ego-subsisting lift his drowning soul had in the world.</p>
    <p>The voiceless Ravenclaw child was black in silence to her Hufflepuff mates,<br/>Who were hoping with hushed giggles that no soul would disturb them there.<br/>This girl seemed full of unease, and while the others arranged their game,<br/>Her dark eyes seemed to whisper dread, roaming until they met Severus' stare.</p>
    <p>At first her face became as white as the sighing glare of the moon.<br/>Remorseful, desperate, her lips parted in a wordless appeal,<br/>Then cancelled their venture as she flew to attend her friend's rule,<br/>Only to return with decreasing fear as she saw he would stay concealed.</p>
    <p>She seemed to regard him, as he looked out on their proceedings,<br/>Like a benevolent witness, and indeed she subtly communicated gratitude<br/>Without speaking. She did not recognize him, but seemed to be needing<br/>One who might see her reluctance and shame, one with a perspective of latitude.</p>
    <p>She seemed to say to his open eyes, with the grief of the accursed,<br/>'Build me my tomb, within the dark yew tree, and in the autumn there,<br/>The yewberries will be golden lamps to burn for me,' her soul's mortality first<br/>On her mind that night, and Severus was the only one who wanted to hear.<strong><br/></strong></p>
  </div>
</div>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0005"><h2>5. Chapter 5</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p></p><div class="storytextp">
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  <div class="storytext xcontrast_txt nocopy">
    <p>v.</p>
    <p>Maybe she gave her trust because she thought him a ghost; what else would a child be doing<br/>Looking out of the window of the haunted Shrieking Shack on young ladies,<br/>Who seemed to be making secret preparations for clandestine potions-brewing,<br/>With the calm aloofness of the undead and the longing of a slave to Hades?</p>
    <p>It became clear why she sought the mercy of the only eyes to see their acts in place of her creator's,<br/>As the girls lit their cauldron on a mound of dry grass and slipped off their clothing.<br/>Their youthful curves were enchanting as they lay like dogs on their backs<br/>And they sang and writhed with the ancient secrets of Lilith, ecstatically moaning.</p>
    <p>After the conclusion of three great tribal yells of vindication and glory,<br/>The Ravenclaw girl stood and read the contents of birchbark runes,<br/>With the gravity of knowing that participation would bind her to eternal fury<br/>But the willingness to proceed despite such formidable doom.</p>
    <p>
      <em>O come you out, O come you out,</em>
    </p>
    <p>
      <em>Wake, wake, lovely white soul of the night!</em>
    </p>
    <p>
      <em>The singing mouse sings plaintively,</em>
    </p>
    <p>
      <em>The sweet night-bird in the chesnut-tree—</em>
    </p>
    <p>
      <em>They sing together, bird and mouse,</em>
    </p>
    <p>
      <em>In starlight, at sunrise, lonely, sweet,</em>
    </p>
    <p>
      <em>The wild notes and the faint notes meet—</em>
    </p>
    <p>
      <em>O come you out, O come you out,</em>
    </p>
    <p> </p>
    <p>
      <em>Wake, wake, lovely white soul of the night!</em>
    </p>
    <p>
      <em>Amid the lilies floats the moth,</em>
    </p>
    <p>
      <em>The mole along his galleries goeth</em>
    </p>
    <p>
      <em>In the dark earth; the summer moon</em>
    </p>
    <p>
      <em>Looks like a shepherd through the pane</em>
    </p>
    <p>
      <em>Seeking his feeble lamb again—</em>
    </p>
    <p>
      <em>O come you out, O come you out,</em>
    </p>
    <p> </p>
    <p>
      <em>Wake, wake, lovely white soul of the night!</em>
    </p>
    <p>There the other girls rose from the ground, dust-covered and red with sweat<br/>To each place an object inside the cauldron: one a textbook, one a scarf, one a quill.<br/>Their brew bubbled with the smell of potent virility and sang with the harmony of a duet<br/>That the girls returned with open voices as the potion began to quiet and distill.</p>
    <p> </p>
  </div>
</div>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0006"><h2>6. Chapter 6</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p></p><div class="storytextp">
  <p></p>
  <div class="storytext xcontrast_txt nocopy">
    <p>vi.</p>
    <p>The raven who had sacrificed her dignity was praised by the Hufflepuff lambs<br/>For her performance in their ritual, which was nearly done, and she bore a graceful smile<br/>Until they turned away, clutching their clothes to their naked bosoms,<br/>And she caught Severus' glance again, whereupon she turned pale.</p>
    <p>Her head was weighed with shame, and her limbs began to shake<br/>As though she knew what <em>he </em>knew about her...that her motive was to feel human.<br/>Perhaps, like he had, she surrounded herself with friends who were fake<br/>And with whom she shared nothing, simply because otherwise, there was no one.</p>
    <p>There was no rest for the wicked, and wicked she surely was, as a liar.<br/>More was still to be done to fulfill this unholy obligation to complete the brew.<br/>So the other girls begged her to gather more weeds and flare up the fire<br/>For they were cold, and the potion had lost its boil anyway, so what could she do?</p>
    <p>She gave him a shrug of resignation, returning to the burden,<br/>Knowing full well she had wrought the gilded cage around her for herself.<br/>Soon the time for leisure was over, and she hurried to fill an earthen<br/>Urn with her spit and hairs pulled from her head, and then to stir the pot she knelt.</p>
    <p>Her companions gave of their personals as well, disposing of all in the cauldron<br/>And they let their breaths hitch and their sighs echo in the still night air,<br/>The chill of which was less with the approaching, heavy glow of dawn.<br/>Severus, being a child, was becoming restless at sitting there.</p>
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</div><div>
  <p> </p>
</div>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0007"><h2>7. Chapter 7</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p></p><div class="storytextp">
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  <div class="storytext xcontrast_txt nocopy">
    <p>vii.</p>
    <p>So he lay upon the floor of the dingy Shrieking Shack, alone,<br/>To rest his eyes a moment, when he heard the three nymphs scream<br/>In horror and delight, and the land shook, and Severus was thrown<br/>Against the wall, and what he saw outside recalled some terrible dreams.</p>
    <p>Rising from the cauldron with the figure of Adonis was a novel rarity,<br/>Svelte, strong, and handsome, with his joyful smile and sensitive grin<br/>Was one that Snape recognized as that of one Cedric Diggory<br/>Though for his gentle prowess he might have been Iseult's Tristan.</p>
    <p>He wore no trousers, shoes, or coat, but the girls paid this no mind;<br/>They had achieved what they desired, and like the priestesses of Dionysus,<br/>With wildness they wrested him from the fire, with the ferocity of the Bacchae,<br/>Crazed with desire for their docile Frankenstein, who smiled at their lust.</p>
    <p>The manifestation of the long-dead hero had captured their imaginations;<br/>Upon the ground they lay, their tiger-lily fingers testing their supple prize.<br/>Even the Ravenclaw girl, for all her reluctance, seemed to have lost her inhibitions<br/>As she opened her mouth to sing, Apollo having touched the strings between her thighs.</p>
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<a name="section0008"><h2>8. Chapter 8</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p></p><div class="storytextp">
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  <div class="storytext xcontrast_txt nocopy">
    <p>viii.</p>
    <p>Satiated, she rolled away as her companions sought the attentions of their creature<br/>To stop rather near the fence of the old house, guarded by tares and weeds.<br/>In some time she rose, composed once more, while her friends yelled in rapture<br/>Only to, with ginger steps and tender dressing, over the fence proceed.</p>
    <p>With the certainty of recognition at closer quarters, Severus prayed a moment<br/>That his black, now oversized clothes would serve to hide him in the darkness.<br/>Hiding his head and tightly in a corner, his remembered wand extended,<br/>He feared what she might think when she saw and knew his likeness.</p>
    <p>No words said she as she circled the house, searching for a door<br/>By which to enter, but there was no portal whose handle she might try,<br/>For locking up the transformed Remus Lupin had been the wise intent of Dumbledore.<br/>But the girl did not know this, and soon her fairy footfalls eased to silence in a gentle sigh.</p>
    <p>She then returned to her companions, for she was the capable person<br/>Who had been given the task of leader in this morbid, frenzied, Dionysian epic<br/>To call forth from the dead some person, for whom her friends had fierce and<br/>Unquenchable passions as vehement and unresolvable as the forest thick.</p>
    <p>The cauldron called for her attentions with embers scarlet and dying,<br/>And she went to minister to it while Titania and Jane lay on the ground with Diggory,<br/>Their naked bodies full and unstill as they sought to quell the forces of unbearable yearning<br/>While their Ravenclaw friend stirred the fire and refreshed their witches' brew of glory.</p>
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  <p> </p>
</div>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Fanfiction Writers and (non)Celebrities: What Do They Know? Do They Know Things?? Let's Find Out!<br/><a href="https://lady-heliotrope-writes.tumblr.com/">Tumblr</a><br/><a href="https://ko-fi.com/ladyheliotrope">Ko-Fi</a></p></blockquote></div></div>
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